The greater part of the Terekenalt army re-crossed to the west bank successfully, and losses among the king's spearhead troops turned out not to have been unduly heavy.
Among them, however, was the Katrian staff officer Zen-Kurel who, smarting under a stern rebuke from the king for having absented himself at Melvda until the army was on the very point of setting out, had been continually and recklessly taking part in one foray after another. Next morning a wounded tryzatt told the king of having seen the young man slip and go down on muddy, trampled ground, but in the half-darkness there had been much disorder and he could not tell what the end of it might have been.
Having grasped that the enemy were in full retreat across the river, Sendekar broke off the fighting, glad to see the back of them so cheaply. About two hours after dawn they cut the ropes, the king himself being the last man to cross.
There could be no doubt-as Sendekar emphasized in reporting to General Kembri-that the failure of the attack had been largely, if not entirely, due to the courage and resourcefulness of the Tonildan slave-girl Maia of Serre-lind, who, alone and entirely without help among the enemy at Melvda-Rain, had not onry succeeded in discovering their plans but had thereupon escaped, swum the impassable Valderra by night-an all-but-incredible feat, in the course of which she had sustained severe injuries- and brought warning to Rallur in the nick of time. In the circumstances he had thought it only fitting to order the news of her heroism to be proclaimed throughout the army.
It was not often that Selperron-a merchant of Kabin- came up to Bekla. Indeed, he had done so only twice before in his life; once as a youth, together with his parents, though that, of course, had been many years ago now, and in the same of Senda-na-Say. Selperron was a dealer in oxhides and other animal skins, though he was also not above such side-lines as river shells and the plumes marketed by the Ortelgan forest hunters. For some time past business had been improving. Apart from the buoyant state of the market, however, his elder son was now of an age to be useful in the business, while his second wife (for Selperron had been widowed some four years before) was a brisk, competent woman, as good as a man when it came to dealing with customers and reckoning profit and loss.
For the first time in years, therefore, he had felt able, this summer, to afford time and money for a trip to Bekla, leaving the business in safe hands. It should not, in fact, prove an unduly expensive jaunt (unless he were to make it so), since he had arranged to stay with an old friend, one N'Kasit, a Kabinese in the same line of business, who had rather unexpectedly uprooted himself and gone to Bekla four years before. N'Kasit had been fortunate enough to obtain from General Kembri a contract (though not a monopoly) to supply leather to the army, and was now doing well. Selperron had sent him consignments of hides at profit, for Bekla's selling prices were higher than Ka-bin's; and N'Kasit, during a visit home the year before, had suggested that Selperron should himself accompany his next consignment up to Bekla. Selperron had felt attracted by the idea; and now, in short, the trip had really come about.
The journey, in a convoy of ox-cart carriers, slave-gangers and their wares, three or four other travelers like himself and the usual half-company of soldiers for protection (who cost far too much, but it was that or nothing), had been somewhat wearisome. Once, he might rather have enjoyed it, but Selperron had now reached a time of life (and fortune) when he preferred comfort and good food, and somehow the inns along the road had not proved all that he seemed to remember. Among the slaves there had been a girl who wept continually, and this, too-being
a kindly and impressionable man-he had found a trial.
